Should You Give Up Gadgets for a Day?

Clearly, some of us make bad decisions with our gadgets. But even without having to live down a mobile phone-fueled tirade of Mel Gibson proportions, many of us have sought forgiveness for our gadget-enabled sins through a ritual purge: a day without gadgets.

The myth of growth

One of the great myths that sustained the late 20th century economy was that of exponential growth. Technological change was supposedly moving ever faster, so economic growth would naturally also be exponential, making us all richer than our parents and immeasurably richer than our grandparents.

Conquering Cape Breton's Cabot Trail

The Cabot Trail on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island is a winding, up-and-down two-lane highway 300 kilometres in length. It took me 29 years to drive it.

Demise of the printed word?

One of the main topics of discussion at last week's 17th Beijing International Book Fair was not whether the printed book was dead - for some that was a given - but whether publishers might be about to die with it.

Can-do attitude is 200 years old

The march of Western civilization and the prosperity of the United States have partly hinged on the quiet little object behind those boxes of pricey whole-grain rotini pasta on the third shelf of your cupboard. The object is cylindrical and silver and wrapped in a paper label. It is dusty. Its expiration date has passed.

Say hello to Bell’s Brantford

The text-messaging craze, cell phones and telemarketers can all be credited to -- or blamed -- on Alexander Graham Bell.